The Forbidden City

One of my favorite episodes of Seinfeld is the Bizarro episode, where up is down and black is white, Elaine finds a new group of guys to hang out with, Kramer is a working man getting his hump busted by old man Leyland and George tries to date a woman way out his league. She ends up taking him to a club that he thought was a meat packing plant and introducing him to her attractive friends. George refers to dating a girl like that to being in a forbidden city where people like him have not been inside for thousands of years. But finally he is dating an attractive girl, is inside the walls, and can come and go as he pleases. Pretty soon he realizes he doesn't even need Amanda, the girl he is dating, as he is already in.

Jerry: So you're gonna burn THAT bridge??

George: Flame on!!

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Of course ultimately the plan goes up in smoke, he is essentially kicked out of the city and in the final scene the club was never really there, it was indeed a meat packing plant.

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Over the last five years, poker for me has really been like the forbidden city. In the beginning, playing $5 games in the living room of the 213, there was the knowledge that a place like that existed, but it was merely the faintest of ideas. There has since been a wide ranging spectrum of involvement with the game of poker for the regulars at that table, with mine being far and away and the most passionate and intense. The game tapped into a lot of what makes me tick... it was a giant puzzle with deductive reasoning, math, memory and instinct playing crucial roles. It should surprise no one that I've spent so much time chasing the game.

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In poker, like most things, you get better with practice. The more hands you play, the more things become clear, the more you figure things out, the more you are used to certain situations. The gap between when I first started playing and where I am today is enormous. If I sat down at table with myself of five years ago, my current self would break my old self in swift order. My old self is reluctanty nodding as I write this.

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I improved steadily, playing tournaments of rising stakes and skill levels, before I finally lost my World Series of Poker virginity the summer of 2008. The experience was memorable and satisfying, paving the way for the experience of 2009, which was both completely devastating and positively euphoric. All the wonderful and difficult things about the game reared their head, but the bottom line was this... I sat with some of the best players out there and more than held my own, played my game like knew I could and FELT like I belonged. I didn't end the trip on the high that I started it on, but I still strongly felt like progress was being made.

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I still feel that way today. But the reality of the game can plant seeds of doubt in you. I have leaks in my game that continue to block my road to being great. I've heard this key message many times but for some reason it evades me when I need it most ----- Poker is a marathon, not a sprint. The game can be played over a lifetime, and over the long haul the best players will win. It's pure statistics. But way too often, I let my emotions get the best of me on certain nights and completely forget that adage. There will always be another night, another game, another chance. And until I can get that leak fixed, I won't be anything close to the player I think I can be. I'll enter the poker elite for a short while, but leave just as quickly. I'll have my moments where the world is my oyster, and others where the oyster is taking a crap on me.

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I'll spend some time in the Forbidden City. But, as I know all too well, it turns back into the meat packing plant just like that.